In Missouri, during the 2014-15 school year, students in kindergarten through third grade got suspended 21,463 times.
Here's what that number looks like: Each circle below represents one suspension given to a student in kindergarten through third grade in Missouri in 2014-15.
Continue scrolling to follow as we dig into the numbers.
Black students make up about 17 percent of students in those grades. If they were given suspensions at a rate equal to their enrollment, they'd have received 3,574.
Instead, they got 11,079 — more than half of all suspensions.
Each dark blue circle below represents a suspension given to a black student.
Look closer at the data and you’ll see that another narrative starts to emerge.
When white children are suspended in the early grades, they get kicked out of class.
But the black children get kicked out of school.
The numbers above included in-school suspensions. Let's remove those.
Missouri gave 9,170 out-of-school suspensions to students in kindergarten through third grade in 2014-15.
Each blue circle below represents an out-of-school suspension. Each gray circle represents an in-school suspension.
Black students received 6,304 — nearly 70 percent of the out-of-school suspensions.
Each dark blue circle below represents an out-of-school suspension given to a black student.
That number works out to about 1 out-of-school suspension per 7 black students.
White students got 1 out-of-school suspension per 76 students.
Those numbers included out-of-school suspensions of any length. Let's remove the ones shorter than a week.
Of the 9,170 out-of-school suspensions in Missouri, 802 of those lasted at least five days for students in kindergarten through third grade.
Each blue circle below represents an out-of-school suspension of five days or longer. Each gray circle represents an out-of-school suspension shorter than five days.
Again, black students make up about 17 percent of all students in these grades. If they were suspended in proportion with their enrollment, they'd have received 119 out-of-school suspensions of five days or longer.
712 — nearly 90 percent — went to black students.
Each dark blue circle below represents suspension of five days or longer given to a black student.
Let's zoom out and look at everything.
These are all the suspensions given to students in kindergarten through third grade during the 2014-15 school year.
Out-of-school, 5+ day suspensions given to black students: 712
Out-of-school, 1-4 day suspensions given to black students: 5,592
In-school suspensions given to black students: 4,775
Out-of-school, 5+ day suspensions not given to black students: 90
Out-of-school, 1-4 day suspensions not given to black students: 2,776
In-school suspensions not given to black students: 7,518
One more thing…
Have you listened to the podcast episode yet? It's about 30 minutes long.
Using the 2014-15 numbers, on average during those 30 minutes*…
…10 suspensions went to students in kindergarten through third grade.
…a little more than 5 suspensions went to black students, and a little less than 5 went to white students.
…about 3 out-of-school suspensions went to black students. About 1 went to white students.
Did you listen to the whole episode?
Because…
…if you listened to the show 3 times, about 1 out-of-school suspension of a week long or longer would have been given to a black student.
…but you'd need to listen to the show 23 times before an out-of-school suspension of a week long or longer would be given to a white student.
*The minimum length of a Missouri school year is 1,044 hours, or 62,640 minutes. We divided each category of suspension by this number, then multiplied by the length of the show.